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Arnaudville,
Louisiana
Nestled along the bayou, deep in
Louisiana's Acadiana, Arnaudville is known for
its great food, toe-tapping music, friendly
residents and affordable living. It is a
great retirement spot!
Slidell,
Louisiana
Located on the north shore of
Lake Pontchartrain, Slidell is quiet, affordable
and boasts water recreation. Is it a great
place to retire?
The State of
Louisiana
Louisiana
is unique that it is divided into parishes,
which in other states are known as
counties. In its early days, it was home
to American Indians and was a French colony and
a Spanish colony and saw an influx of African
slaves. Even the British and Germans
settled in the area in the 1700s.
This mix of cultures gives many modern Louisiana
towns a heritage not found anywhere else in the
U.S.
In the early-1800s,
President Thomas Jefferson, worried about having
a foreign nation on the western border of the up
and coming United States, wanted to purchase the
port of New Orleans. Instead, his
representatives negotiated for a land package
that doubled the size of the U.S. literally
overnight, and on October 20, 1803, the U.S.
Congress ratified the Louisiana Purchase.
The deal cost the U.S. 3 cents per acre and
dramatically enlarged the young country without
a shot on either size ever being fired.
People
known as Cajuns and Creoles are dominant in the
southern part of the state. Cajuns are
descendants of French-speaking people who were
expelled from Acadia (now Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, Canada) and then settled in what is now
southwestern Louisiana in 1765.
White Creoles are predominantly of French and
Spanish ancestry, and Creoles of color are
descendants of slaves who were born in either
the French and Spanish colonies. Today, the term Louisiana Creole usually refers
to people who are of mixed-race.
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